Former Tour de France champion says he is 'done with road racing' despite
having to settle for silver on the track in Glasgow

With one savage look of distaste, Sir Bradley Wiggins tore off his silver medal and marched out of the velodrome in the manner of a man bound for the first fast train out of Scotland. After fellow knight Sir Chris Hoy had been subject to an over-zealous security check to gain entry into a velodrome named after him, Wiggins’s near-miss in the quest for the Commonwealth gold he had coveted for 16 years completed a chastening day for cycling’s ennobled few.

How sharply his chagrin contrasted with the saucer-eyed joy of England’s Helen Scott and Sophie Thornhill, who grasped the first para-sport gold of these Glasgow games with a comfortable triumph in the tandem sprint. Just feet away from where Wiggins and his confreres in the team pursuit sloped off into the seething throng in the in-field area, this effervescent pair were savouring the strains of Jerusalem. Scott competes as an able-bodied tandem pilot, while Thornhill, the 18-year-old from Manchester born with a form of albinism that affects the pigment in her skin and eyes, emphatically made good on her promise to perform with a level of skill and athleticism to belie her condition.

Wiggins, however, seldom looked last night as if he would break a run of three successive Commonwealth silvers with the gold to garland his return to the track. He gave a thunderous expression on the podium – even though with him, his true mood is often difficult to gauge – after his ambitions of a maiden Commonwealth gold were sabotaged by a commanding performance by Australia in the final of the 4,000 metres team pursuit. The four-time Olympic champion and 2012 Tour de France winner could provide no decisive flourish as he and team-mates Ed Clancy, Andy Tennant and Steven Burke wound up over five seconds behind the dominant green-and-gold quartet, who won in a Games record time of 3 min 54.851 sec.

Wiggins and the rest of the quartet appeared to be struggling against the Australians even in qualifying, with their sub-four-minute time lowered by almost two seconds by their rivals. The final merely confirmed that silver is his colour on this stage, as he collected a fourth runners-up prize at the Commonwealths since his debut in Kuala Lumpur in 1998.

It brought visible frustration, given that his exclusion from Sky’s Tour de France team, coupled with his resolve to return to the track at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016, had bred a fierce resolve to make his first appearance for 12 years at the Commonwealths count. Instead the litany of near-misses, silver in 1998 and another two in Manchester, acquired an unwanted fourth chapter here.

Wiggins admitted that he was unlikely to compete in this summer’s Vuelta and said he had ridden his last Tour de France. “I’ve kind of done the road now. I’ve bled it dry. The road is quite cut-throat. The track feels more like a family and a closer-knit group of people. That will probably be it for the Grand Tours. I can't imagine doing that now. I don't want to have to miss things on the track because of my commitments on the road."

He had selected the team pursuit as just one of four options available, so as not to spread himself too diffusely. He tried to sound sanguine that the decision had not worked, reflecting: “I don’t want to sound like Roy Hodgson, but I can take some positives from this. Four weeks ago we sat in a room for the first time in six years, wondering how far we could ago. We have had limited preparation, and I hope we can look back at the Olympics in two years’ time with golds around our necks, thinking that Glasgow was the starting point. There is going to be a lot of graft to get ourselves in the right place for Rio.”

Clancy started out with demonstrable intent in the final, but the four’s hopes were sunk early as they found themselves down by 1.4 seconds after 750 metres. England espied a chance when the Australian quartet were reduced to three by the loss of Luke Davison, the lead-off man, who was cut adrift as a consequence of the ferocious early pace. But the Australians, even when a rider down at half-distance, simply refused to relinquish the advantage.

But so, too, did the stirring exploits of Scott and Thornhill, who compensated for the English disappointment of the evening with a brilliantly controlled display to vanquish their Scots rivals in the final. “Even on the last lap, when it was starting to hurt, we could hear the Scottish getting behind us,” Thornhill said. “That was fantastic to hear. Every gold is special but to have it on a platform with the world watching is incredible.”

She and Scott were tempted to stay a while longer, just drinking in the acclaim. Wiggins was a little more muted. He did deign to head towards the Australian camp afterwards to offer his congratulations, but his flinty-faced expression spoke vividly of a man who had not collected what he came for.